Perennial herb with a stout woody stock up to 1 cm diam. Flowering stem solitary, erect to c. 60 cm, subdichotomously branched above into a very open few-headed corymbose panicle, glabrous except for very short sparse glandular pubescence on the inflorescence branches. Leaves mostly radical, up to 15 x 1.8 cm, up to half of this petiolar, blade narrowly elliptic, apex subacute, base gradually narrowed into the petiole, both surfaces glabrous, margins more or less entire or denticulate, upper leaves small, distant, sessile, rapidly passing into inflorescence bracts. Heads discoid, campanulate, 6-7 x 8 mm. Involucral bracts c. 14, 4.5-5 mm long, calyculus bracts 2 or 3, very small, slender, all minutely and sparsely glandular-pubescent, often tinged purple. Flowers purple, sometimes paler or whitish. Achenes cylindric, ribbed, glabrous.
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